the npr came up with one idea. >> each day the u.s. treasury mints nearly $2 million in coins. coins that mostly go directly into storage. abc's john karl checked it out. >> reporter: we took a journey to the u.s. mint in philadelphia where they seem to have more doors than "get smart." for a lesson in how the government is losing money by making money. it sounds a little bit like las vegas around here except the coins never stop coming. this is the presidential dollar coin. congress ordered the mint to make millions of them to honor every dead president. but nobody seems to want them. rutherford b. hayes. hot off the press, literally, these coins are still warm. made of manganese brass, they cost nearly 32 cents a pop to make. the mint makes nearly 2 million of them every day. do the math. about $600,000 a day to make them. and each one of these bags, 140,000 coins, $140,000, more than 2,000 pounds. because almost nobody uses these things, most go directly into storage. we found a bunch of them 100 miles down the road in a vault. here at the federal reserve in baltimore, the c